In a post on X, Rahul Gandhi said the proposed changes in the Rural jobs bill would centralise control, shift financial burden to states, and weaken the legal guarantee of employment.
BY PC Bureau
December 16, 2025: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday launched a sharp attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Centre’s proposed changes to MGNREGA, saying the government was undermining
Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals and stripping the rural poor of their rights.
In a post on X, Gandhi said MGNREGA — which he described as the living embodiment of Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of Gram Swaraj — had been a lifeline for millions of rural Indians and a crucial economic safety net during the COVID-19 pandemic. He alleged that the scheme had consistently unsettled Prime Minister Modi and that successive governments over the past decade had systematically weakened it.
“Now, the Prime Minister wants to erase MGNREGA altogether,” Gandhi wrote, accusing the Centre of attempting to replace a rights-based programme with a model of centralised control.
Listing the scheme’s founding principles, Gandhi said MGNREGA guaranteed the right to employment on demand, empowered villages to decide their own development works, and ensured full wage support by the Central government along with 75 per cent of material costs. He claimed these safeguards were now being dismantled under the proposed legislation.
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According to Gandhi, the new framework would allow the Centre to dictate budgets, schemes and rules, force states to bear 40 per cent of the costs, and deny employment to workers once funds are exhausted or during harvest seasons — effectively leaving rural labourers without work for months.
Calling the bill a “direct insult to Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals,” the Congress leader said that after presiding over massive unemployment among India’s youth, the Modi government was now targeting the secure livelihoods of poor rural families. He said the Opposition would resist the move both inside and outside Parliament.
Modi ji has a deep dislike for two things – the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi and the rights of the poor.
MGNREGA is the living embodiment of Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of Gram Swaraj. It has been a lifeline for millions of rural Indians and proved to be a crucial economic safety net…
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) December 16, 2025
“From Sadak to Sansad, we will oppose this anti-people bill,” Gandhi said.
Earlier, the Lok Sabha witnessed noisy scenes and repeated disruptions on Tuesday as the Opposition mounted a fierce attack on the government’s proposed VB-G RAM G Bill, accusing the Centre of dismantling the MGNREGA and undermining the rights of India’s rural poor.
Leading the charge, Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra launched a scathing critique of the government, alleging that Prime Minister Narendra Modi harbours a “deep discomfort” with both Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas and the legal rights of the poor. Her remarks triggered sharp protests from the treasury benches, forcing the Speaker to intervene as sloganeering erupted across the House.
Calling MGNREGA the “living embodiment of Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of Gram Swaraj,” Priyanka Gandhi said the scheme had served as a lifeline for millions of rural families and proved to be a crucial economic safety net during the COVID-19 pandemic. “This programme protected the poorest Indians when the country was in crisis,” she said, amid loud interruptions.
She accused the Modi government of systematically weakening MGNREGA over the past decade, arguing that the new bill was the final step toward dismantling it altogether. “For ten years, this government has tried to hollow out MGNREGA. Today, it wants to erase it completely,” she said.
